Wall Street: Wednesday close

BLUE-chips suffered their steepest decline in more than two weeks as investors brushed aside a wave of encouraging earnings.

The benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 144.75 points, or 1.7% , to 8257.61, but the Nasdaq edged ahead 3.71 to 1394.72, buoyed by upbeat news from Microsoft and Intel.

Analysts said many investors were cashing in profits from the market's recent rally on fears that the advance may have been too much, too soon. Downbeat outlooks from Coca-Cola and 3M encouraged the selling.

'We've had a pretty substantial rally as a result of the war,' said Todd Clark, head of listed equity trading at Wells Fargo Securities. 'While earnings have been better than expected, we're having a little bit of a sell-on-the-news mentality.'

Twenty-six of the 30 stocks making up the Dow finished lower; the four exceptions were tech companies Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and IBM.

But pundits said that while profits generally had been better than expected, they hadn't been spectacular. 'Investors had already set their bar pretty low on tech companies' earnings,' said Steven Goldman, chief market strategist at Weeden.

Coca-Cola slid $2.63 to $39.90, after the soft drinks giant said first-quarter volumes were less than expected. 3M dropped $4.64 to $129 after JP Morgan cut its 2003 and 2004 estimates for the maker of Scotch tape and other products, citing slowing global demand.